This subject follows a course of readings in lyric poetry in the English language, tracing the main lines of descent through literary periods from the Renaissance to the modern period and concentrating mostly on English rather than American examples.

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "The Merchant of Venice" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.

This web app is a complete critical edition of MND, which can be viewed as plain text or in a mode with glosses appropriate to students just getting familiar with the play. It has a second mode for more advanced students with textual notes and explorations of mythology and classical allusions. A final mode for performers/experiential learners displays the text showing typographical indications of scansion and rhetoric. The app also includes an interactive mode for memorization drills. The text from all modes is fully printable.

The text is accompanied by a full set of features, including:
a full cast list and doubling chart,
a textual history,
a performance history,
an essay on performance challenges and opportunities,
a guide to practical scansion principles,
a resources guide connecting readers to facsimiles and study aides,
and a special section covering all the music and dance cues in the show with suggestions and examples.

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.

The activities in this lesson invite students to focus on the characters from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to describe and analyze their conflicts, and then to watch how those conflicts get resolved.

The Folger Shakespeare Library provides the full searchable text of "Much Ado About Nothing" to read online or download as a PDF. All of the lines are numbered sequentially to make it easier and more convenient to find any line.

For more than 400 years, Shakespeare's 37 surviving plays, 154 sonnets, and other poems have been read, performed, taught, reinterpreted, and enjoyed the world over. This Teacher's Guide includes ideas for bringing the Bard and pop culture together, along with how performers around the world have infused their respective local histories and cultures into these works.

Students will create a video documentary based on the reading of Othello.

Driving Question : How does teenagers navigate a corrupt society in relationships that involves jealousy, drama, and bi-racial differences?

The Research Process: Finding, Assessing, Synthesizing, and Reporting Information 11-12.W.5: Students will conduct short as well as more sustained research assignment and tasks to build knowledge about the research process and the topic under study by assessing the strengths and limitations of each source in terms of the task, purpose, and audience.

Because Shakespeare’s works were meant to be performed, students will be introduced to Shakespeare’s language in general and the plot and themes specifically of Othello through props and looking at specific language use (insults, negative connotation words). This is the second day in a longer unit. This lesson was created by Kristi Bose and is designed for Grade 9 English Language Arts students. Each student will make predictions about the plot and themes of the play. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA 10.1.5c, NE LA 10.1.5e, NE LA 10.1.6i and NE LA 10.1.6n.

This is the third day in a longer unit. Students will use two informational texts two analyze the theme of racism, especially in the context of interracial marriage and apply those concepts to Act I, Scene i of Othello. This lesson was created by Kristi Bose and is designed for Grade 9 English Language Arts students. Each student will analyze the theme of racism in Othello as a starting point for a discussion about racism in today’s society. This Remote Learning Plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA 10.1.5d, NE LA 10.1.6d,  10.1.6i, 10.1.6.n, and NE LA 10.1.6o.

Because Shakespeare’s works were meant to be performed, students will be introduced to Shakespeare’s language in general and the plot and themes specifically of Othello through quoting lines. This is an introduction to a longer unit. This lesson was created by Kristi Bose and is designed for Grade 9 English Language Arts students. Each student will memorize one key quote from Othello, build background knowledge about Shakespeare’s language including iambic pentameter, and make predictions about the plot and themes of the play. This lesson plan addresses the following NDE Standard: NE LA 10.1.5c, NE LA 10.1.5e, and NE LA 10.1.6l.Approximate time: 50 minutes

In an eight week unit of study, students will explore concepts of migration through the lens of cultural identity and perspective. What are elements of culture that shape us, shape how we see others, and shape how we are seen in return? Students will investigate shifts in cultural norms and stereotypes specific to forced migration and captivity as depicted in The Tempest by William Shakespeare and supplemented through a variety of texts, discussions, and reflections.

When teaching Shakespeare, we add to the modern problem of social media distraction the mission to convince students to not only read text, but to read something 400 hundred years old and in verse! So why not allow both worlds to meet? In this curricular unit, young learners are given the opportunity to explore their own world of modern communication while simultaneously analyzing the Bard, comparing the lines of Hamlet to how they communicate with each other. Students will explore and analyze Hamlet’s many lines, whether they are meant as private meditations or public barbs, and translate that to modern modes of communication. Would Hamlet have used a public Tweet or a private “direct” message for any given sentiment? Who would he want to hear him ponder whether “to be or not to be,” and how would that look on social media? Through exploration of key, succinct lines in the play that would hold up well in today’s world of headlines, texting and Tweeting, students will delve into the character of Hamlet, his relationships with other key characters, and how words themselves – modern or centuries-old – can have a deep impact upon us, even in brief.

Explore where the prohibitions and permissions that occur in every day life come from, why they exist, and what gives them force. For example: food—you are only willing and able to eat a subset of the world’s edible substances. Marriage—some marriages are prohibited by law or by custom. This course addresses questions of prohibition and permission using psychological sources and literary works from ancient to modern. Texts include works by Shakespeare, Melville, Mary Rowlandson, and Anita Desai. Students give group and individual oral presentations.

A short quiz on CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.3, featuring a passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth. The passage has a Dale-Chall text difficulty level of 7-8, and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 7.0. (However, these metrics are not designed for poetry.)

A short quiz on CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.9-10.3, featuring a passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth. The passage has a Dale-Chall text difficulty level of 7-8, and a Flesch-Kincaid level of 7.0. (However, these metrics are not designed for poetry.)

This lesson integrates coding and computer science into English Language Arts for the purpose of fostering appreciation of Shakespearean wit and language and to provide students exposure to coding. Students first choose words that carry insulting connotations from a Shakespearean play and then create a program that randomly generates insults based upon those found words. Swift Playgrounds, Scratch, or Raspberry Pi are recommended resources for creating this project, and links to projects are provided for each of these platforms. Sample code and directions are provided. Students who are beginning to learn coding may complete the code while more advanced individuals may modify the program or create their own.

This lesson integrates coding and computer science into English Language Arts for the purpose of fostering appreciation of Shakespearean wit and language and to provide students exposure to coding. Students first choose words that carry insulting connotations from a Shakespearean play and then create a program that randomly generates insults based upon those found words. Swift Playgrounds, Scratch, or Raspberry Pi are recommended resources for creating this project, and links to projects are provided for each of these platforms. Sample code and directions are provided. Students who are beginning to learn coding may complete the code while more advanced individuals may modify the program or create their own.

“Reading Poetry” has several aims: primarily, to increase the ways you can become more engaged and curious readers of poetry; to increase your confidence as writers thinking about literary texts; and to provide you with the language for literary description. The course is not designed as a historical survey course but rather as an introductory approach to poetry from various directions – as public or private utterances; as arranged imaginative shapes; and as psychological worlds, for example. One perspective offered is that poetry offers intellectual, moral and linguistic pleasures as well as difficulties to our private lives as readers and to our public lives as writers. Expect to hear and read poems aloud and to memorize lines; the class format will be group discussion, occasional lecture.

This presentation describes the characters, plot, setting, foreshadowing examples, as well as numerous motifs of the play. In addition, there is an attached Romeo and Juliet word search, as well as comprehension questions for your students to answer as they are reading.